


Prompt: Denied food as punishment- Hunk (Voltron) and Lance (Voltron)

by AnaliseGrey



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Food Issues, Gen, Hunk is a shield, Injury, denied food as punishment, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 10:40:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14851209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaliseGrey/pseuds/AnaliseGrey
Summary: fill for square #3 of my Bad Things Happen Bingo card.vanquisherofsnails on tumblr asked: "Oh Hunk and "Denied food as a punishment" seems like a good fit!"





	Prompt: Denied food as punishment- Hunk (Voltron) and Lance (Voltron)

Their intel had been bad from the beginning, the fact that the Grix were working with the Galra had been completely missed. He and Lance had been taken after a brutal fight and transported off-planet to a nearby labor colony the Grix used. The camp there was mostly underground, the workers living in barred-off caves and forced to mine ore that was then sent to the Galra. From what Hunk had been able to tell since they arrived, it didn’t take much to get someone sent here.

Lance had been injured in the battle, and not much had been done to treat him. Lance had tried putting up a strong front, struggling through the first couple days, but by day three, he wasn’t able to get up when the morning bell rang.

“Sorry, Hunkalicious. Think I’m taking a sick day.” Lance’s voice wavered, and his hair was damp with sweat despite the cool temperatures of the caves. Hunk could tell before he even touched him that Lance had a fever. 

“Lance, you have to, I don’t know what they’ll do if you don’t.”

The weak smile fell off Lance’s face, and he shook his head. “I don’t think I can stand. How do you think I’d get through the day? Go on, Hunk, no reason they should punish both of us.”

Hunk had tried to get Lance up, but one of the overseers had interfered, forcing Hunk out of the holding area. Hunk had spent the whole day tense, worried sick. He was amazed at the end of the work shift to return to find Lance where he’d left him, apparently untouched.

“Lance! Are you ok? What happened?”

Lance cracked his eyes open. He didn’t look better, and if anything looked worse. 

“Nothing. They left me alone.”

Hunk didn’t quite believe it, but there wasn’t much he could say. He brought Lance water, which helped some, but when the guards came with evening rations, there was one missing.

“Hey.” Hunk got up and tried to keep his voice even. “There’s a ration missing.”

The guard barely looked at him. “No, there is not. You don’t work, you don’t eat. He didn’t work, he doesn’t eat.”

Hunk’s temper started to simmer. “But he  _ can’t  _ work, he’s sick, you have to see that.”

The guard eyed Lance, then looked at Hunk with a smirk. “Then you’d best work hard enough for the both of you, hm?”

Hunk swallowed down his response, and returned to Lance’s side, helping him sit up enough so he could share some of his ration between them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” Hunk handed a chunk of bread to Lance. “Don’t worry about it.”

The next day, and the next, Hunk worked twice as hard, and earned Lance’s ration along with his own. He was hoping rescue would come soon, because he wasn’t sure how long he could keep this up. He ended each day bone tired, but compared to how Lance looked, how could he complain? He’d managed to get some basic aid supplies from the guards; even if they weren’t being overly helpful, they apparently didn’t want them to die. The noise Lance had made when Hunk had poured the disinfectant over the obviously infected wound was going to stay with Hunk for a long time. He’d bandaged it as well as he could, but Lance was still weak and feverish, and Hunk didn’t know what else to do for him. Lance kept assuring him he was fine, but Hunk could see Lance’s smile getting dimmer with each passing day.

Hunk, for the most part, kept his temper. He was usually known as one of the more patient of the paladins, definitely one of the more easy-going of the bunch, and it took a lot to get him seriously angry. Especially when he was actively trying to keep his temper.

And he’d tried. Oh, he’d tried.

If it had been just him, it wouldn’t have been so dire, but Lance was here too, so he was trying pretty hard.

At heart though, Hunk was a shield. It was part of who he was as a person, and he couldn’t stand idly by when an innocent person was being hurt.

So when a guard started beating another inmate for not working hard enough, Hunk’s temper hit the boiling point. All the frustration and rage he’d been feeling for not being able to help Lance simmered over, and before he knew it he was between the guard and the other inmate. He took a few hits before he could grab the guard’s hand, but again, Hunk was a shield, taking hits is what he did, and he threw the guard to the side. When a group of other guards swarmed in, the guard Hunk had attacked waved them off, brushing himself off as he stood, and looked Hunk in the eye.

“Half rations for him until I say otherwise.”

Well fuck.

Hunk got back to work, and hoped. Hoped that if he kept working as hard he’d get at least one full ration. Hoped his rash actions wouldn’t impact Lance. He couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion or relief he was weak with when dinner came and he still got one full ration. Without hesitation, he gave it all to Lance. Hunk was a big guy. He was mostly muscle at this point from all their paladin training, but he knew he had some padding to spare. Lance didn’t.

Lance was most of the way through his ration when he looked over and caught Hunk’s eye. Even sick, tired, and half asleep, Lance was still observant.

“Where’s your’s?”

“Ate it already. All that work makes a guy hungry, you know?”

The look Lance gave him was considering, suspicious, but he didn’t have the energy to keep it up, and after a moment went back to eating. Hunk breathed a sigh of relief. It would be rough, but he could manage for the few days it would take the guard to get over it.

After day 2 of half rations, Hunk was starting to worry the guard  _ wouldn’t  _ get over it. He didn’t want to take food from Lance; Lance was slowly starting heal- better color, getting his strength back- but he was nowhere near ready to work yet. He also knew that continuing the level of exertion he was putting out with no incoming fuel wasn’t sustainable. He’d been filling his stomach with water, which helped some, but his stomach was now in an almost constant state of turmoil, hunger pangs coming often enough he’d just started trying to ignore them. His real concern was when he got lightheaded towards the end of the second day. He’d keep pushing himself as long as he had to, but he knew there came a point where his body would stop being able to function. 

He really hoped their rescue came before that happened.

Hunk woke early the morning of the third day, his stomach cramping painfully, begging him to eat something. He curled up, trying to breathe through it. He’d get up in a minute, get some water from the spigot on the other side of the holding area.

“You’re not eating.”

Hunk startled, despite Lance’s voice being quiet, and when he turned over, Lance was watching him, eyes glinting in the low light of the night cycle.

“Um...what?”

Lance’s eyes narrowed, and he pinned Hunk with a look.

“I thought at first you were just giving me the larger half of the ration, but you’re not eating anything, are you?”

Hunk wanted to lie, but he’d never been especially good at lying to Lance. Made planning surprise parties a bitch.

Hunk sighed, and shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

Lance looked pained, then angry, and he jabbed Hunk’s arm with a finger as he hissed, “ _ Hunk _ , why the cheese not?”

“ _ Ow _ , your fingers are bony. And please don’t talk about cheese right now.”

Lance kept staring at him, and Hunk squirmed.

“Ugh,  _ fine _ , just stop looking at me like that. They weren’t going to feed you because you weren’t working, but of course I couldn’t let that happen so I started working twice as hard so I’d earn your food too, which worked fine except then I made a guard mad, but he was a total jerk, so ya know, kind of justified. But he decided I was on half rations ‘til he said otherwise and I wasn’t going to give you  _ less _ , so-” Hunk trailed off, shrugging, and cringed as his stomach gave angry gurgle.

“Jeez, Hunk, you ridiculous...I don’t even know what. I’ll get back to you on that. But Hunk, you have to eat, you can’t keep  going like this and  _ not _ .”

Hunk’s face hardened. “I’m not letting you go without because I couldn’t keep my temper.”

Lance sighed, and poked, this time more gently, at Hunk’s arm again. “I’m not saying to not give me anything, I like food as much as the next person. What I’m saying is that I need you to survive this with me, and if you don’t eat, the chances of that happening start to drop real fast. How long before you collapse while working? Or there’s an accident because you were distracted or something? Promise me when breakfast comes you’ll eat some of it.”

Hunk clenched his jaw. He wanted to, he really really wanted to. But he also hated the idea of not giving the whole thing to Lance.

“Hunk,  _ please _ .”

And the same way he couldn’t lie to Lance, he had trouble not doing what Lance wanted when he used that tone. Lance was so rarely serious that Hunk always took notice when Lance made the effort to be so.

Hunk sighed, and gave in. “Yeah. Okay.”

Lance smiled at him, and grabbed onto Hunk’s hand, squeezing.

“Don’t worry. The others’ll be here soon, and then you can go nuts in the Castle’s kitchen.”

Hunk snorted. “Yeah. Though man, I’m totally gonna shower first. I never thought I’d want hot water more than food, but here we are.”

“I mean, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but yeah, shower first.”

Hunk snorted and playfully shoved at Lance, the both of them cracking up as the morning bell went off and the lights started to come up to day cycle brightness.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to claim a square/submit a prompt for my bingo card? Want to flail at me, say hi, or send me random messages to my inbox? Come find me on tumblr at [Analisegrey](http://analisegrey.tumblr.com/)!


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